Sweet Potato Rosti with Goats cheese & Caramelised Red Onion

I haven't had it too many times in my life, but I seem to remember particularly enjoying rosti. I also particularly like sweet potato, and recently had a couple of baked sweet potatoes with goats cheese. They were nothing short of amazing, so I thought I'd blog them... then thought that maybe it was a little too simple for a full-on post.... so I got my thinking cap on, and decided to try a rosti version, with a few other twists!

Ingredients

2 large sweet potatoes, grated

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 scotch bonnet, finely chopped

2 medium eggs, lightly beaten

125g soft goats cheese

1/2 red onion, thinly sliced

1tbsp granulated sweetener

1tbsp balsamic vinegar

This should make around 4 rosti - one would probably work well as a starter, two as a light main meal. You know fine well I ate all four to myself!

Method

When it comes to prep, I used a food processor to grate the sweet potatoes. It was just much easier than using a normal grater - that project started well but soon got old. However, grating the onion in the food processor wasn't such a good idea - it all turned to mush. I'd therefore recommend just chopping it finely with a knife.

1. Preheat the oven to 220ºc

2. Squeeze as much water out of the grated sweet potato as you can. I did this by pressing in a clean tea towel.

3. Gently fry the onions, garlic & scotch bonnet, just enough to soften up the onions.

4. Add the sweet potato, onions, garlic, scotch bonnet, egg and some freshly ground black pepper to a bowl. Crumble in a quarter of the goats cheese, and use your hands to combine everything well.

5. Divide the mixture into about four, and shape patties out of each portion, squeezing out any excess liquid as you go - you need them to be compacted enough to hold together.

6. Place the patties onto an oiled baking tray, and sprinkle each one with a little more oil on top.

7. Pop them in the oven for half an hour.

8. After half an hour, remove the rosti from the oven, and top each one with a quarter of the remaining goats cheese. Stick them back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so, or until the goats cheese starts to turn golden.

9. Meanwhile, pop the red onion, sweetener, and balsamic vinegar in a frying pan, over a moderate heat. Stir them occasionally to make sure they're well coated, and don't stick to the pan.

10. Serve on top of the rosti & goats cheese.

Tidy!

Tidy Savings

ASDA left the opposition standing this week, winning with an impressive £6.45 - a whopping £1.20 ahead of Tesco in second place, at £7.65.

Tesco could do with selling smaller packs of Scoth Bonnets, as they were between 82 and 99 pence more expensive than the others. Their prices on Sweet Potatoes, Goats Cheese, and Balsamic vinegar helped them gain the respectable second, but they could've come in a lot close to ASDA than they did.

Tidy Tweaks

Well.. the first tweak you can make here is not to bother with the rosti! As I mentioned before, this works particularly well if you just bake a couple of sweet potatoes, and use the same toppings!

If you're going for the rosti, though, it's worth noting that in this particularly recipe, the scotch bonnet didn't seem to do much. I'd maybe up the quantities, use chilli flakes instead, or maybe not even bother at all.

Next time I try this, I may just use the one egg - the rosti were a little wet in the middle (though cooked, and delicious) so I'd gamble, with the risk being that they'd be too dry with just the one or may not hold together as well. The goats cheese within the mixture may also have added to this "wet" consistency, so it might be worth just reserving all of the goats cheese for topping at the end.

I might also add more garlic than I did here, and perhaps season a little more. Depending on which goats cheese you use, be careful with salt, though.

I think I've also made these a little on the "tall" side - it may be an idea to divide the mixture into a larger number of smaller portions, and flatten each rosti out a little more.

I love the caramelised red onion, but if it's not for you, the contrast between the sweet potato and goats cheese works particularly well on its own! That said, I did wonder if a sauce would work with this. Maybe a balsamic reduction instead of the caramelised red onion? Maybe just a drizzle of balsamic on its own could be simple, but effective.

What would you do differently? Share your thoughts below, on twitter, or on our Facebook page.